Salah Abdeslam, sentenced to life imprisonment in France for the attacks of November 13, 2015, refused Monday to appear in Brussels at the trial of the attacks committed in March 2016 in the Belgian capital by the same jihadist cell.
The 32-year-old French jihadist, who is one of ten defendants in the trial, was taken from his cell when, according to his lawyers, he was not planning to appear at this procedural hearing.
A few minutes after the opening of the hearing, around 9:30 a.m. local time, he wanted to leave the box, AFP noted. “The way you treat us is unfair,” he denounced to the address of the president.
He was referring to the conditions of appearance in closed and glazed individual boxes, compared to “cages” by defense lawyers, and limiting the possibilities of communicating according to them. Several lawyers were planning on Monday to request its “demolition”.
Monday morning, the nine defendants who must appear were all taken from prison (a tenth, presumed dead in Syria, is tried in absentia). But several immediately criticized these boxes after appearing in court.
“Like Dogs”
“We are like dogs here,” thundered Tunisian Sofien Ayari, an accomplice in Abdeslam’s escape, banging his fist on the wall of his box.
While he had initially expressed the wish to stay, Salah Abdeslam, fine beard and blue and white striped polo shirt, changed his mind when he saw that Mohamed Abrini, Sofien Ayari and other co-defendants were being escorted out of their box.
He launched to the president: “I know that it is not your decision, these boxes”, but because of that “the trial begins in an unfair way”. “Most of the defendants do not want to appear, I too will join them” in the cells of the justice building, he added. Only three defendants agreed to stay.
On the morning of March 22, 2016, two jihadists blew themselves up at Brussels-Zaventem international airport, and a third a good hour later in the metro of the European capital. Result: 32 dead and more than 340 injured.
At this stage, the federal prosecutor’s office has identified 960 civil parties, injured or relatives of victims claiming compensation for damage, in the largest trial ever organized in Belgium before a popular jury.
The investigation quickly revealed, in particular thanks to a computer found in a trash can, that the perpetrators of the March 22 attacks were linked to those of November 13 (130 dead in Paris and Saint-Denis), members of the same cell of the armed group Islamic State formed largely on Belgian soil.
It was probably the arrest of Salah Abdeslam on March 18, 2016 in Brussels that precipitated the action of the other members of the cell.
For this trial, which is being held in the former Brussels headquarters of NATO, converted into a vast judicial complex, the proceedings should not open until October. But a preliminary hearing was to settle various points of procedure on Monday, and in particular to fix the order of appearance of the witnesses who will succeed one another at the bar, a priori until June 2023.
“The Beginning of Something Else”
About the boxes, the lawyer of Mohamed Abrini – “the man in the hat” who had abandoned his cart of explosives at the airport before fleeing – expressed his “shame”, his “deep disgust”.
“Madam President, destroy me this thing […] we can’t hold a trial under these conditions, don’t tolerate that! You have the power to take them down, take them down! “, protested Stanislas Eskenazi.
On the contrary, the federal prosecutor’s office had to defend the installation of such structures, which in its view were justified for security reasons.
In Brussels, six of the ten defendants including Abdeslam, Abrini, Ayari and Osama Krayem (who had turned back with his explosives after entering the metro) were already involved in the river trial which ended at the end of June in Paris for the November 13.
All but one must answer for “murder in a terrorist context” and incur life imprisonment. The Belgian-Moroccan Ibrahim Farisi is on trial for “participation in the activities of a terrorist group” and faces up to ten years in prison, according to one of his lawyers.
Faced with the accused, the victims see the trial as a key step in their reconstruction.
“We hope that our suffering will be recognized” and that this marks “the beginning of something else”, confided to AFP Philippe Vandenberghe, a volunteer first aider who intervened at the airport and suffered from post-traumatic stress.